Born in Le Marche on Italy’s Adriatic coast, Fabio Trabocchi grew up in a sharecropping family. The James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur now oversees a Washington, D.C.-based group that includes opulent Italian flagship Fiola, seafood restaurant Fiola Mare, Spanish coastal restaurant Del Mar, and three locations of pasta house Sfoglina. Fiolina, at Washington Dulles International Airport, brings his Italian cooking to travelers.
Beyond Washington, Trabocchi oversees Seta su Ilma and Seta su Luminara, tasting menu restaurants aboard The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s Ilma and Luminara. Both draw on coastal Italian cooking. At Seta su Luminara, Asian influences reflect Venice’s historic role in the spice trade.
More projects are in the works. “We constantly must reinvent ourselves, while questioning ourselves and our capabilities,” says Trabocchi. “You must keep evolving. This work of mine, this obsession, is a train that never stops.”
The Creation Process
“It all starts with instinct,” Trabocchi says of evaluating a new opportunity. “Does it feel right?”
Next, he and his team assess whether the property or partnership fits the group’s identity and the direction they want to take the business.
The team also considers what the neighborhood needs and how the restaurant would stand apart from similar places nearby. Often, Trabocchi says, it is “the place that tells you what concept you must do.”
“It is important that what we serve is what we say we are going to do with the restaurant and what we told the guests we are doing,” Trabocchi says of the menu. “And we must tell a story with the food.”
Alongside market research, the team considers whether the project makes financial sense for investors and whether it can recruit people who would thrive at the restaurant.
Those discussions can take months, if not years, before the team decides whether to move forward.
